The Year of Krugman Thuggishness

In 2008, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. At that time, it wasn't hard to imagine the Swedes were rewarding Krugman for eight years of blasting George W. Bush. In other words, the Nobel Prize truly matched its namesake: Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. Krugman regularly throws rhetorical dynamite at anything that stands in the way of his radical worldview.

Krugman outdid himself for outrage in 2011. Every year, the Media Research Center collects a panel of willing conservative journalists and talk show hosts and puts them on a sickening roller coaster ride through the worst media bilge of the last twelve months to arrive at the Best Notable Quotables of the Year.

Paul Krugman sat in the sulfurous center with three other "bests."

First, Krugman took the Quote of the Year for his controversial dynamite throwing on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. On his blog "The Conscience of a Liberal," he accused someone else of ruining the unifying force of the attacks.

"What happened after 9/11 -- and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not -- was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes,

George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neo-cons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons."

The atrocity was "hijacked" -- note the distinct flavor of terrorism in that term -- by the neocons. "The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it."

What made this commentary perfect in its spoiled-brattiness was the last sentence: "I'm not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons." It's obvious he was a world-class divider on a day of unity and a coward.

One of the vilest aspects of Obamacare was the inclusion of "death panels" to recommend when medical treatments should be denied because extending Grandma's remaining life wasn't cost-efficient. But that never stopped a liberal from posturing. Krugman won the Grim Reaper Award for Saying Conservatives Want You to Die for his remarks against the Paul Ryan Medicare proposal on CNN.

"To be a little melodramatic, the voucher would kill people, no question," said Krugman, as CNNs Gloria Borger said, Ryan "infuriated liberals." Then came more Krugman. "The cuts in Medicare that he's proposing, the replacement of Medicare by a voucher system, would in the end, mean that tens of millions of older Americans would not be able to afford essential health care. So that counts as cruelty to me."